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How do you see poker evolving in the future?
I have been watching some WSOP videos from over the years lately and the game in general, both live and online, has changed so much over the last 10/15 years. The game just seems to be continually evolving and it is therefore difficult to imagine just what the game will look like 5/10/20 years from now.
In 2003 when Chris Moneymaker won the main event for $2.5m there were only 839 entrants. By 2006 when Jamie Gold won, just 3 years later, there were over 10 times this amount of entrants with 8,773 players fighting it out for a top prize of $12m. Internet poker was booming and the game was readily accessible to so many players. These players could look to Moneymaker as a template and realise it was possible to devlop their game quite quickly, play at the WSOP and other live events, and possibly even win it all!
Even just back in the early to mid 00's I cannot remember much or any in the way of 'late registration'. There were no 'Zoom', 'Bounty Hunters', 'Spin n go's', 'Mad Tilt' or 'Rush' games. There were loads of players from the USA freely playing and it looked like poker would continue to grow exponentially. Then there was the clamp down on USA players playing online and ultimately 'Black Friday' shocked the poker world. Since then several other governments have wanted a slice of cash from sites to allow their citizens to play on poker sites online and it all seems a bit unclear what this will mean in the long term for the future for poker.
Game tactics and strategy have also changed greatly during this time. In the early 00's a 3 bet was viewed as being so strong that it was relatively easy to exploit players and rather than just open raising and stealing the blinds, it was possible to 3 bet and steal the blinds, any antes and the original raise and thus much more profitable. This resulted in many players reducing their standard opening raises from 3-4x to 2-2.5x to give better implied odds and introduce more pot control. All this contrasts with where we are at now, for example in 'StayorGo's' brilliant hand review thread where there is discussion about preflop 5bet and 6bet ranges...
I was watching the 2015 main event recently and Norman Chad and Lon McEachern were talking about button limps becoming more prevalent with wide ranges so that players could play more hands cheaply in position. They also discussed the introcuction of clocks/timers at the table in future WSOP events (something akin to chess) to speed up play. It was this that had me wondering what on earth poker will be like in 5/10/20 years time.
Personally I feel that while NLHE will probably continue to grow in popularity, there will also be a realisation that there may be bigger edges to exploit in non NLHE games such as PLO and PLO8 which seem less evolved than NLHE. As for USA players and governments trying to grab a slice of the pie, I have no idea where this will end up. I just hope a way is found for everyone to play when they desire, from any country, for the sake of online poker's future growth. I won't hold my breathe on that one though as individual government's desires to get in on the action looks like a troublesome issue to resolve.
One thing seems certain, as the game has changed so much over the last 10-15 years and is continually evolving, it is hard to imagine that in 5/10/20 years from now that the game will not have altered dramatically.
Will there be rampant bots cleaning up the game? People talking about 9bet and 10 bet ranges? 100+ events at the WSOP with 30k entrants in the main event fighting it out for a $50m top prize? People using poker tracking software at the live tables via their 'google glasses'?
What do you think the future has in store for poker?
In 2003 when Chris Moneymaker won the main event for $2.5m there were only 839 entrants. By 2006 when Jamie Gold won, just 3 years later, there were over 10 times this amount of entrants with 8,773 players fighting it out for a top prize of $12m. Internet poker was booming and the game was readily accessible to so many players. These players could look to Moneymaker as a template and realise it was possible to devlop their game quite quickly, play at the WSOP and other live events, and possibly even win it all!
Even just back in the early to mid 00's I cannot remember much or any in the way of 'late registration'. There were no 'Zoom', 'Bounty Hunters', 'Spin n go's', 'Mad Tilt' or 'Rush' games. There were loads of players from the USA freely playing and it looked like poker would continue to grow exponentially. Then there was the clamp down on USA players playing online and ultimately 'Black Friday' shocked the poker world. Since then several other governments have wanted a slice of cash from sites to allow their citizens to play on poker sites online and it all seems a bit unclear what this will mean in the long term for the future for poker.
Game tactics and strategy have also changed greatly during this time. In the early 00's a 3 bet was viewed as being so strong that it was relatively easy to exploit players and rather than just open raising and stealing the blinds, it was possible to 3 bet and steal the blinds, any antes and the original raise and thus much more profitable. This resulted in many players reducing their standard opening raises from 3-4x to 2-2.5x to give better implied odds and introduce more pot control. All this contrasts with where we are at now, for example in 'StayorGo's' brilliant hand review thread where there is discussion about preflop 5bet and 6bet ranges...
I was watching the 2015 main event recently and Norman Chad and Lon McEachern were talking about button limps becoming more prevalent with wide ranges so that players could play more hands cheaply in position. They also discussed the introcuction of clocks/timers at the table in future WSOP events (something akin to chess) to speed up play. It was this that had me wondering what on earth poker will be like in 5/10/20 years time.
Personally I feel that while NLHE will probably continue to grow in popularity, there will also be a realisation that there may be bigger edges to exploit in non NLHE games such as PLO and PLO8 which seem less evolved than NLHE. As for USA players and governments trying to grab a slice of the pie, I have no idea where this will end up. I just hope a way is found for everyone to play when they desire, from any country, for the sake of online poker's future growth. I won't hold my breathe on that one though as individual government's desires to get in on the action looks like a troublesome issue to resolve.
One thing seems certain, as the game has changed so much over the last 10-15 years and is continually evolving, it is hard to imagine that in 5/10/20 years from now that the game will not have altered dramatically.
Will there be rampant bots cleaning up the game? People talking about 9bet and 10 bet ranges? 100+ events at the WSOP with 30k entrants in the main event fighting it out for a $50m top prize? People using poker tracking software at the live tables via their 'google glasses'?
What do you think the future has in store for poker?
Comments
a new tv channel will open that shows a poker site's MTT play that evening. it will have 3D pop-up graphics. the opportunity to be seen will attract so many new players to the poker site and keeps the existing players engaged and loyal too.
the channel could be called Earth Poker. that's the future.
With poker sites raising rakes and playing more gambling based games such as spin and go's, there is a lot less 'easy profit' to be made.
That said, this makes players lazy and start to accept less returns (just look at how few strategy threads there are on forums these days compared to the boom days). Those who put in extra effort will rise to the top though and maybe make even more profit by using better strategies.
4 and 6 card games will be the place to make more profit and slowly more people will start playing them instead, and nlhe is quite boring when compared to the action there, so we could be seeing a swing away from nlhe to plo in a much bigger way.
I have always thought backgammon could take off in a big way too, it hasn't yet, but who knows what may happen in the future, especially if the big sites cotton on to this and start putting resources into it.
So in short, nlhe will be viewed as a simple form of poker, Omaha and the like will be where the money is made but no-one will make make the massive profits of the past except for the poker sites from increased rake (and the government will surely take their cut, across the globe.)
with renowned part-time trolls tazered, geldy. ;-)